


just turn your fears into trust

by gins4n



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anbu Hatake Kakashi, Gen, Hatake Kakashi-centric, I'm Bad At Tagging, Kakashi is NOT okay, M/M, Mentioned injuries, Suicidal Thoughts, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 11:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gins4n/pseuds/gins4n
Summary: Kakashi doesn't know what he stands for anymore, until he does.





	just turn your fears into trust

**Author's Note:**

> This idea is straight out of a dream, but it didn't want get written at all. It isn't the boss of me though, so here it is anyway. I win!

Kakashi is broken. Literally. He has three cracked ribs, his right arm is split into two pieces and he has, at least, a minor concussion. That doesn't stop him from bowing in front of his Hokage as he gives his, strictly oral for the matters the kind Kakashi deals with, report on the latest mission (mostrosity he thinks morosely just like me) and it doesn't stop him from bypassing the hospital in favour of his bare apartment.  
As he enters, it's apparent that Gai came by while he was away and tried to keep it in order, even if he has desisted from giving it a more lived in feel.  
He slips his sandals off in the entrance, but it's pointless to the extreme, since he leaves a trail of bloody footprints anyway.  
He throws himself into the shower still dressed and peels his clothes off as the worse of the blood gets washed away by the now pink water. He washes himself the best he can, which is becoming more and more difficult as time passes because he never stops seeing bloodstains on body even when he's clean.  
When he's done, he lets nature follow his course in drying him as he starts the washing machine with his already wet clothes inside. Then, he lays on his bed, on top of its blanket, and ignoring the pain he feels emanating from his broken bones, he tries to sleep.  
After a while, he does.

Kakashi is twenty and has been serving in ANBU for seven years, almost five under the Sandaime Hokage. Enrolling him in the force, Minato-sensei had hoped he would get better after his teammates deaths; Kakashi had only hoped for the grief to dull, for himself to dull. Now he is duller, but it isn’t better at all. The grief is still crushing, so much so that everything that isn’t duty becomes too much for him to attend to, but he has lost the slight will to react he had had before his life becoming one long string of assassination-genocide-destruction.  
Sometimes he lets himself linger in the regret of not having let anyone in, not Gai who always tries so earnestly, not Tenzo who needs someone as much as he does, not one of the many people who were willing to help him before he drove them away. Sometimes he realizes he’s actually still in time to change, but the thought drops fast, always, because in truth he doesn’t want to get better, doesn’t want to try, because what if he loses everything again? He can’t live with the what ifs. He would rather not live at all.  
So the guide of the honourable death of the shinobi still sits next to his bed, Kakashi wishing hard that one day on one of his monstrous missions the occasion finally presents itself for him to die without it feeling on purpose, without him feeling like he gave up.  
Without him feeling like his father.

Kakashi wakes up abruptly in the middle of the night. One of his fellow ANBU landed soundlessly on his windowsill and is signing at him, intruder, S-rank, on the run. Kakashi is hurt, but he can’t not answer the call: he was supposed to go to the hospital after his debrief to the Hokage, and wasn’t allowed to be back in his apartment if he wasn’t fit for duty. So he wears a spare ANBU uniform and jumps out the window, ignoring the pain moving causes him.  
He soon enough understands that the intruder is the Snake Sannin, who supposedly stole forbidden scrolls from the Hokage and, startlingly for people who hadn’t been involved into Danzo’s plots before, from the councillor’s private library.  
Hound gets to work. He’s ANBU’s best tracker, so it's not surprising that he's the only one who picks up Orochimaru’s trail. It leads to the cave maze inside the Hokage mountain, that is mostly used as a safe place for civilians during emergencies. Most of the tunnels layout isn’t known even to the leaf shinobi, because people who go in discovering rarely return even if fully trained. Figures that someone like the Sannin would know how to find his way where everyone else failed.  
He picks up speed and enters the tunnels on a run, the unhealthy hope he always feels during too dangerous situations starting to rise. If there's someone who Kakashi can die honourably fighting against, that's Konoha's most infamous missing nin.  
The way is tortuous and narrow, so much so that Kakashi needs to slow down in the more tricky tracts. However, when the cave becomes more spacious, the trail is strong enough that Hound knows his target must be near. In a little while, he sees the man, slender and relaxed, walking as if breaking in and stealing from the stronger ninja village was just some mundane chore.  
Kakashi palms a kunai silently and launches himself at the Sannin, stabbing at his nape in one smooth motion. He thinks he will hit true for a moment and a pang of dissatisfaction hits him, but he doesn’t pull the blow. However, Orochimaru dodges at the last second, jerking the kunai out of his attacker’s hand and throwing him against the cave’s wall. Kakashi gets his feet under himself and jumps onto the floor, but before he can launch another attack a wave of sickening killing intent invests him and stops him from moving.  
“Sensei is still using kids as sacrificial animals, I see” says Orochimaru serafically, studying Kakashi's crouched form. The younger man still isn’t able to attack, but he stands, meeting the other's eyes and staring hatefully into them.  
The Snake Sannin tilts his head slightly to the side, expression bland, but the look in his eyes is just as intense as Kakashi's own.  
“Look at you, how fierce you are. You could have been so bright. How could they ruin you this way?” asks the man and Kakashi... wonders. In a world where he didn’t bring death to all those he loved, could he have been bright? If not bright, content? Or at the very least, not utterly ruined?  
He stood still as thoughts flooded him. Without Kakashi noticing, the Sannin puts a hand on the back of his head and pulls firmly, and Kakashi should fight, because Orochimaru is a threat to Konoha and a monster in every sense of the world and because right now he's probably going to kill him and... Kakashi should care. But he doesn’t. And so he does nothing, follows the hand until his forehead is on the Sannin’s shoulder, their bodies nearly touching.  
It’s the closest he's had to a hug since he pushed Gai away after his near betrayal of the Sandaime and it makes the weight of Kakashi's life crush on him. He crumples against the Sannin the way he hadn’t let himself do even with Minato-sensei, crying hard and gripping at the other man's yukata almost enough to rip it. The hand on his nape caresses him gently in a way that isn’t fit to a monster, but monsters shouldn’t cry either and yet here Kakashi is, a monster himself, doing just that.  
He doesn’t know how much time passes before he finally stops crying, or how much time he spends without moving an inch afterwards. However, it all ends abruptly with Orochimaru slipping from his grip and starting walking towards the exit as if nothing has happened. Kakashi watches the man's retreating back, wondering why he’s leaving himself open to an attack, when he realizes that he won’t attack. He won't.  
He starts walking, following the Sannin's now far form, and doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, thoughts: if Kakashi didn't stay in Konoha for Naruto (and it doesn't look so by the way he avoided the kid like the plague), then why did he stay? Also, if he was so ready to die as to buy a practical handbook about it, why hasn't he just killed himself?  
> Writing this fic made me realize that it was probably because he still didn't want to be a "bad" shinobi like his father. So, even though Kakashi basically adopted his morals through Obito's, he doesn't want to "fail" at being a shinobi by killing himself, because that would mean stealing one of its best warrior from the village.
> 
> More thoughts: Kakashi basically thinks he's a bringer of bad luck at this point, bacause during his life everyone he ever cared for died in various flavours of "my fault". The only exceptions being Gai and maybe Tenzo, who Kakashi thinks got spared from his bad luck solely because he drove them away (or in Tenzo's case, never let in).  
> Do you know who this reminds me of? Tsunade. Do you know who Orochimaru was thinking about when he saw Kakashi? Also Tsunade!
> 
> Thank you for coming to my ted talk. If any of you want to comment, but are shy or don't know what to say, please comment "good job" and you will make an happy author. In any case, thank you for reading!


End file.
